


intro

by wave_of_sorrow



Series: the imagination for reality [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Multi, Parallel Universes, anything more would be spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:21:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wave_of_sorrow/pseuds/wave_of_sorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>None of this ever happened.<br/>Somewhere, somewhen, it did.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	intro

**Author's Note:**

> This is, as the name suggests, the intro to a series of unconnected ficlets, all of which take place in alternate realities and parallel universes. Basically, this is where all my random and possibly ridiculous and (as far as we know) non-canon compliant ideas for the world of DW go. Ratings, warnings, pairings, etc will vary so much that I went for individual stories in a series, rather than one chaptered story, to make navigation a bit easier.
> 
> Title is taken from the The XX song of the same name; the italicized bits at the beginning and end are a quote from Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_.

_things need not have happened to be true._

_tales and dreams are the shadow-truths_

Think of reality as a river, dividing into smaller streams at moments of possibility, except that’s kind of a bad metaphor. It’s more like a tree, branching off into a thousand different directions, except that’s even less like it. Think of it like glass, and each decision a point of pressure making it fracture into new realities, but it isn’t like that either.

What it is like is this: every decision, every moment of impact, creates an alternate reality, a place where things happened differently.

There’s the big ones: entire parallel universes where the steam engine is never invented, and Winston Churchill is never Prime Minister, where Atlantis is the unsinkable capital of Earth, and Donna Noble turns right.

Then, there’s the small ones: realities created by decisions so little it’s hard to spot any difference at all, sometimes.

The important part is this: everything that never happened, and everything you can imagine and everything you can’t, is real.

The Doctor sends Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness back to London in the twenty-first century, and he dies on Satellite Five in the year 200,100. Jack sleeps on the couch in the Tyler’s flat for nearly six months, and Rose never forgives him for making her lock the TARDIS and walk away. They get married, in the end, because they’re the only two people who understand, and their children grow up on stories of mad men in blue boxes.

Martha Jones wears a dress to her brother’s birthday party, and she regrets it every second she’s in 1599.

In the Library Donna Noble lags behind, and that is how she sees Lee. They marry, and never have children, and Donna says she’ll keep travelling with the Doctor as long as he always gets her home for tea. Sometimes, he actually does.

Amelia Pond grows up with two parents and no crack in her bedroom wall. At age twenty-one she marries Rory Williams, and they name their daughter Melody. She grows up loved and cared for and protected, and by the time she’s Mels, because Melody Pond sounds like a name in a fairytale, people say she has her mother’s head and her father’s heart.

Jack Harkness receives a TARDIS blue envelope. The license plate of Rose Tyler’s car reads BDWLF. Martha Jones returns to America for the first time since the Earth was stolen. Donna Noble’s grandfather buys a plane ticket to Utah. They watch the Doctor die.

None of this ever happened.

Somewhere, somewhen, it did.

 _that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes,_

_and forgot._


End file.
